Dietary changes that may be helpful

 
Primitive societies exposed to very little salt suffer from little or no hypertension.
Salt (sodium chloride) intake has also been definitively linked to hypertension in western societies. Reducing salt intake in the diet lowers blood pressure in most people. The more salt is restricted, the greater the blood pressure-lowering effect. ndividual studies sometimes come to differing conclusions about the relationship between salt intake and blood pressure, in part because blood pressure-lowering effects of salt restriction vary from person to person, and small to moderate reductions in salt intake often have minimal effects on blood pressure-particularly in young people and in those who do not have hypertension. Nonetheless, dramatic reductions in salt intake are generally effective for many people with hypertension.
With the prevalence of salted processed and restaurant food, simply avoiding the salt shaker no longer leads to large decreases in salt intake for most people. Totally eliminating salt is more effective, but is quite difficult to achieve. Moreover, while an overview of the research found "There is no evidence that sodium reduction presents any safety hazards, reports of short-term paradoxical increases in blood pressure in response to salt restriction have occasionally appeared. herefore, people wishing to use salt reduction to lower their blood pressure should consult with a doctor.
Vegetarians have lower blood pressure than do people who eat meat, This occurs partly because fruits and vegetables contain potassium-a known blood pressure-lowering mineral. The best way to supplement potassium is with fruit, which contains more of the mineral than do potassium supplements. However, fruit contains so much potassium that people taking "potassium-sparing" diuretics” can consume too much potassium simply by eating several pieces of fruit per day. Therefore, people taking potassium-sparing diuretics should consult the prescribing doctor before increasing fruit intake. In the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) trial, increasing intake of fruits and vegetables and reducing cholesterol and dairy fat led to large reductions in blood pressure (in medical terms, 11.4 systolic and 5.5 diastolic) in just eight weeks. Even though it did not employ a vegetarian diet itself, the outcome of the DASH trial supports the usefulness of vegetarian diets because diets employed by DASH researchers were related to what many vegetarians eat. The DASH trial also showed that blood pressure can be significantly reduced in hypertensive people (most dramatically in African Americans) with diet alone, without weight loss or even restriction of salt. Nonetheless, restricting salt while consuming the DASH diet has lowered blood pressure even more effectively than the use of the DASH diet alone. Sugar has been reported to increase blood pressure in animals and humans in short-term trials. Though the real importance of this experimental effect remains unclear, some doctors recommend that people with high blood pressure cut back on their intake of sugar.